Its spring, which means ELCA synod assemblies are beginning.These annual, boring, waste-of-money gatherings usually include a wide variety of attacks on God's Word and the ever popular anti-Semitic based attacks on Israel.The ELCA's Rocky Mountain Synod has already gone on record at their assembly last weekend passing a resolution called “Accompaniment, Awareness-Raising, & Advocacy For The People Of The Holy Land.” (see here)

In the Resolution the Assembly resolved to “affirm our support for sisters and brothers in the ELCJHL as they remain faithful to the Gospel amid the oppression of Israeli military occupation”.Saying Israel is oppressing people and occupying land is a fallacy which is often repeated by those who are anti-Semitic. The Assembly then encouraged people to use the ELCA Peace Not Walls resources claiming that it has “reliable information about the situation” (in Israel).In no way is the ELCA a reliable source for what is happening in Israel. The passed resolution also seeks a congressional investigation into Israel's use of U.S. aid.The ELCA's aim in that request is to cut or end aid to Israel so as to hurt the Jewish nation.Remember, the ELCA views Israel as oppressors and occupiers of land that they think the Arabs should have.Stopping U.S. aid to Israel would increase the chances of that happening. And finally, the Assembly resolved, “that this assembly urges members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to consider investing their retirement and other funds in a manner consistent with the Peace Not Walls campaign.”This is another attempt to hurt Israel financially by cutting personally financial investments going to Israeli companies.The ELCA would rather have those investments go to entities within the terrorist controlled Gaza strip. The Rocky Mountain Synod also had a workshop during the assembly called, “Peace Not Walls: Why are we involved in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? Faces of the Occupation” (see here). Satan's desire, shown throughout history, has always been to destroy God's chosen people, the Jews.Today he is using the ELCA, who claims to follow Christ, to try to accomplish that purpose.

"Peace Not Walls"? Give unto us a break. It's a real tossup as to which predominates in the Ichabod Lutheran Church in America: stiff-necked heresy or disingenuous mendacity.

Not to worry, ELCA. You have similarly mendacious friends in Hamas.

[from Dennis Prager's "The Palestinians Want Peace --- Just Not With a Jewish State]:

". . . Earlier this month in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, I interviewed Ghassan Khatib, director of government media for the Palestinian Authority and the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. I asked him the same question: Do the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state?
He was more direct than the Palestinians students at Stanford.

His long answer amounted to: "No."

There is no Jewish people, he told me, so how could there be a Jewish country? The Palestinian position is that there is a religion called Judaism, but there is no such thing as a Jewish people. (Interestingly, the Jews are referred to belonging to a religion only once in the entire Hebrew Bible — in the Book of Esther, by the anti-Semite Haman.)

In other words, Palestinians — people in a national group that never existed by the name "Palestine" until well into the 20th century — deny the existence of the oldest continuous nation in the world, dating back over 3,000 years. Now, that's real chutzpah.

Indeed, the Palestinians deny that the Jews ever lived in Israel. That is why Yasser Arafat could not even admit that Jesus was a Jew; rather, according to Arafat, "Jesus was a Palestinian." To acknowledge that Jesus was a Jew would mean that Jews lived in Israel thousands of years ago, in a Jewish state, moreover — long before Muslims existed, long before Arabs moved there, and millennia before anyone called himself a Palestinian.

[ . . .]

"As Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, wrote in The Washington Post . . . :

"Two Israeli peace proposals, in 2000 and 2008 … met virtually all of the Palestinians' demands for a sovereign state in the areas won by Israel in the 1967 war — in the West Bank, Gaza and even East Jerusalem. But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected the first offer and Abbas ignored the second, for the very same reason their predecessors spurned the 1947 Partition Plan.

Each time, accepting a Palestinian State meant accepting the Jewish State, a concession the Palestinians were unwilling to make.

That is the issue. Not settlements. Not boundaries. The Palestinians, like most of their fellow Arabs and like many Muslims elsewhere, have never acknowledged that the Jews came home to Israel because they have never acknowledged that the Jews ever had a national home there. And they don't even acknowledge that the Jews are a people."

Reply

Kathy S

5/9/2013 04:36:05 am

Of all the information on "Exposing the ELCA," I find this the most disturbing. I believe it is deeply spiritual and I don't pretend to understand it. For Lutherans -- or any Christians -- to take a not-so-subtle anti-Israeli position... given so much history.... I am left shaking my head in astonishment and disbelief.

Reply

Dave from Minnesota

5/9/2013 06:21:22 am

The ELCA has, on their web site, many lies about Israel. Such as claiming that there were viturally no Jews in Israel pre-1945. And that there has always been a society of "Palestinians". While in reality, the people in that area had been known as Jews, Arabs and Christians until Arafat invented the Palestinian people in the 1960s.

Why do I think the ELCA is anti-Semitic, vs just being misguided? Christians (like the Jews before them) are being cleansed from almost the entire Arab and/or Muslim world. Even Egypt now. Yet the Christian ELCA says nothing about this. Instead they are obsessed with doing away with the liberal open nation of Israel. There are 55 Muslim nations (very few with basic human rights), and 1 small Jewish country, which has full rights for all of its citizens, including its Christian and Arab people.
I think you can draw your own conclusions.

Reply

Mr. Grapefruit

5/10/2013 03:18:58 am

A good test of the ELCA's bias will be whether the ELCA will express solidarity with Bishop Younan and the ELCJHL when it does not involve Israel. Bishop Younan recently condemned the kidnapping of two Syrian Bishops. (http://www.elcjhl.org/2013/04/23/elcjhl-bishop-younan-condemns-kidnapping-of-syrian-christian-leaders/)

Will the ELCA be quick to speak out in solidarity with these oppressed Christians?

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Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. ​1 Thessalonians 5:21

Dan Skogen

Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word.

If you have been helped and blessed by Exposing the ELCA's ministry, please help us continue to proclaim the truth of God's Word to ELCA members who need to hear it.